One Crazy Summer

At the center the next day, the girls help stamp designs onto t-shirts with paint. Sister Mukumbu asks Delphine, Eunice (the eldest Ankton sister), and Hirohito to fill up water containers for the project. While they fill the containers, Delphine looks at Hirohito out of the corner of her eye and wishes she could ask him what it is like to be “a colored Chinese” (112). Hirohito catches her and confronts her. Embarrassed, Delphine reminds him that he almost crashed into her and her sisters with his skateboard on their first night in Oakland. When Hirohito corrects Delphine by pointing out that he was riding a go-kart instead of a skateboard, Delphine calls him a “China boy” (113). 

Eunice ridicules Delphine for not knowing that “Hirohito” is a Japanese name. Hirohito leaves, and Eunice tells Delphine that she would not pick on Hirohito if she knew what happened to his father. After Eunice refuses to tell Delphine what happened to him, she walks off.

Since Delphine was so successful at getting Cecile’s permission to use the kitchen, the sisters decide to ask Cecile for a TV. Just as she has been taught to do at the center, Delphine calmly takes her demands to “the Establishment,” which is Cecile, since she “was someone over thirty years old who had the power” (117).